President Biden reflected on the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan during a speech at Arlington National Cemetery on Veterans Day, saying he was determined not to pass the responsibility of ending America’s longest war to yet another administration.
“Four presidents faced the decision after we got [Osama] bin Laden whether to end our longest war in history in Afghanistan,” Biden said. “I was determined not to leave it to a fifth.”
The withdrawal, which marked the end of a 20-year U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, has remained a point of sharp criticism, especially from Republicans, who contend that the exit was poorly executed.
Former President Donald Trump, who recently won the presidential election by defeating Vice President Kamala Harris, also addressed the Afghanistan withdrawal in a visit to Arlington Cemetery in August. He was there to mark the third anniversary of the Kabul airport attack that killed 13 U.S. service members. Trump’s visit led to a minor controversy after an incident involving a cemetery worker, which prompted an investigation reportedly still ongoing as of late October.
Trump’s recent electoral victory over Harris included a decisive sweep of seven key swing states, earning him a projected 312 electoral votes to Harris’ 226, and he appears on track to win the popular vote as well.
Following Harris’s defeat, Biden commended her campaign as “inspiring” and urged Americans to “bring down the temperature” in political discourse.
Biden and Trump are set to meet at the White House on Wednesday, continuing a long-standing tradition of a meeting between the incoming and outgoing presidents—a tradition that was not observed after Trump’s loss in the 2020 election.ac
